Deon Meyer - Dead at Daybreak

Ha.

Discomfort about the whole investigation. There was something he’d missed, he knew it, there was something, somewhere. Something Van As had said, something in O’Grady’s file.

You make your own luck.

Uncomfortable. He wasn’t a loser. With his life, yes, but that was different, you couldn’t battle the odds, but this thing was dead, just another murderer who had joined the hordes of the unarrested, just another statistic. It happened, he knew it; sometimes there wasn’t enough evidence or enough luck.

He needed a great deal of luck with this case, he needed an explosion, a piece of fucking dynamite that could blow away the cobwebs of fifteen years, blow open the secrets of Johannes Jacobus Smit, blow away the dust so that the bones and the fossils – the facts – could be distinguished from the rocks.

How the fuck could he make his own luck with this thing?

How could he gain more time?

Gain time.

You must be able to go back in time.

If he could only…

Hang on.

No, it wouldn’t…

Quantico. What had they said?

No.

Yes.

Jesus .

He braked, suddenly and hard, swearing as a car behind him complained with a blast of the horn, missing him by inches, and he turned, drove over the central ridge in the road, heard the Corolla’s undercarriage flattening the shrubs, let the wheels kick up wet sand, turned back to Hope Beneke because he had a fucking idea, he had a bomb, he had a plan to blow away the spiderwebs.

♦

She simply sat, coffee mugs still on the table, unwilling to think about the full implications of his visit, her thoughts random, disappointed.

She had no choice: she had to accept that he had been right, that they wouldn’t get any further. The police had achieved nothing, either; he had at least achieved a bit more, discovered a false identity. He’d been so positive with his theories last night, and she’d been so hopeful, excited that they were going to solve the problem, but he wasn’t only…

She’d been pleased with herself earlier, with her handling of him, her calmness, her avoidance of potential conflict. She’d thought she’d discovered the key to Zatopek van Heerden, the mystery: Simply defuse every explosive situation. Don’t react. She had hidden her disappointment well, she had been so brave when she said that she would tell Wilna van As, but she would find it hard. She knew she would be brokenhearted.

Disappointment. Because Van Heerden was out of her life. Better that way. He was, despite the hurt and the defenselessness, trouble. With a capital T .

Was there really nothing else he could do?

No. She had to accept that. He had even returned the advance. She looked at the little pile of notes on the breakfast counter. The testimony of her detective.

She got up, put the mugs on the tray. She had to carry on. Join Valerie and Chris for a barbecue this evening. She needed an evening of laughter and relaxation. It had been a hard week. She walked to the kitchen, put the mugs in the sink. Was struck by a sudden idea.

Joan van Heerden was never going to be her mother-in-law. And she laughed, loudly, above the soft sounds of Céline Dion and shook her head, still laughing, opened the taps, took out the washing-up liquid from the cupboard below – what absurdities the mind could suddenly conjure up – then heard the sound of her front-door bell.

She wasn’t expecting anyone, she thought, turned off the tap, walked to the door, and peered through the spy hole. Zatopek van Heerden.

Had he forgotten something? She opened the door.

“There is something we can do,” he said, and his eyes were bright and his voice urgent, and she wondered whether he had heard her laughing.

“Come in,” she said, “please,” her voice under control, and he walked past her, stood at the counter as she closed the door behind him.

“I…” he said. “It…”

“Won’t you sit down?”

“We have…What we must do is to turn the clock back fifteen years. It’s our only chance.”

She stood between nothing and nowhere, decided to sit down. She had never seen him like this, excited, with such urgency in his voice.

“I’ve just realized I’ve been speaking to all the wrong people. I’ve been talking to everyone who didn’t know him fifteen years ago. It’s time for us to change that. There is a way.”

“How?”

“Publicity.”

She looked at him, not understanding.

“When he was murdered, O’Grady didn’t know that he had changed his name. Was there a picture of him in the newspapers?”

“No. Wilna van As wouldn’t…release the identity book’s photo to the press. There was no reason…”

“One thing has changed since then,” he said. “We now know he wasn’t Jan Smit. No one knew it then. If we can get the photo published now and ask if someone recognizes him, if we say he was someone else, we may be able to find out who he was. And if we know that, we may find out what was in the safe…”

“And who wanted it so badly.”

“We can place an advertisement,” he said. “Small ads, it wouldn’t cost much.”

“No,” she said. “We can do much better than that.”

“How?”

“Kara-An Rousseau,” she said.

He merely looked at her.

“She can get us publicity. Free for all. In every NasPers newspaper in the country.”

“She invited me to dinner this evening,” he said, suddenly sorry he had refused.

Jealousy raised its head. “Kara-An?”

“Yes,” he said. “But I refused. I didn’t know – ”

“You must go,” she said. I didn’t know you knew each other so well , she thought.

“I don’t know her.”

“We have so little time. We have to speak to her immediately.”

“Will you go with me?”

She wanted to go, she…but…

“I haven’t been invited.”

“I’ll ask if I may bring a partner.”

“No,” she said. “We don’t have to go to the dinner. It’s early enough. We can try to see her before dinner.” She got up, found the cell phone, looked up the number in the memory, and dialed. It rang.

“Kara-An.”

“It’s Hope. Am I phoning at a bad time?”

“Hi. Of course not. How are you?”

“Crazy at the moment, thank you. Do you remember the case of the will I told you about?”

“Of course. The one Mr. Sexy is helping you with.”

“We urgently need your help, Kara-An.”

“ My help?”

“Yes. I know it’s a bad time, but we can have a very quick conversation. It would be easy…”

“Of course, it sounds fascinating. And you must stay to dinner. I’ve invited a few people. Come a bit earlier…”

“I don’t want to disrupt your Saturday evening, Kara-An.”

“Don’t be silly. There’s enough space and more than enough to eat.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. I can’t wait to become a part of the Great Search.”

They said good-bye. Hope Beneke turned to Van Heerden.

“You’ll have to take your money,” she said, “before I spend it on a new outfit for this evening.”

♦

Eight hours later she would lie in her bed and wonder how an evening that had started so conventionally could end with so much violence and chaos. She would lie there weeping about the disillusionment and the humiliation and would again contemplate his words, “We’re all evil,” and wonder whether he was perhaps right – and where the badness in her lay.

But when he had come to fetch her and stood at her door in black trousers, white shirt, and a black jacket, she had felt a warmth toward him, for the effort he had made to conform with the clothes even if the cut wasn’t modern and the shoes were not really right. His eyes widened slightly when he saw her in the short black dress and he said with undisguised surprise and honesty, “You look great, Hope,” and for a moment she wanted to put out a hand and make physical contact, but mercifully he turned and walked to his car before she could act on the impulse.